And, while the Dorset-based former show may have had the edge in terms of production values and big name stars – David Tennant as the tortured cop with the dark past, Olivia Coleman (doing the same West Country accent she had in Hot Fuzz) as his assisting detective sergeant – it was its much sillier, more pulpy counterpart on the other side which had me hooked.

Actually Mayday wasn’t so much a “whodunnit?” but more a “who didn’t do it?”, everyone on the programme having so many potentially homicidal skeletons rammed into their respective closets they barely had enough room to slide in a pair of skinny jeans sideways.

Like the stab-happy denouement to Agatha Christie’s Murder On The Orient Express, they looked like they could all have offed local May Queen Hattie for one reason or another.

There was creepy Aiden Gillen, his lips lasciviously curling into a perma-pervy sneer at every woman he saw; Peter McDonald’s creepy cop, returning home on the day of the young girl’s disappearance with someone’s blood all over his shirt, along with Peter Firth’s creepy property magnate who liked popping to the woods for hours on end to spy on young couples having it away.

Oh, and let’s not forget the creepy local loon who liked to dress up as a satanic Morris Dancer, lock cats in tea chests and wave samurai swords inches away from his sleeping brother’s face.

All in all, that’s more “creepy” per square yard than “Bring your pets to work” day at the International Federation of Entomologists.

It’s testament to Mayday’s writers, however, that we felt compelled to clear our busy schedules – or, in my case, the emergency descaling of the kettle – to tune in for five consecutive nights in one week.

Not that I was entirely sure, come Thursday’s ludicrous climax, that it had been time well spent.

Because it turned out – SPOILER ALERT – the recently and violently deceased Hattie had been something of white witch and had put an impotency spell on the aforementioned copper after he’d made a pass at her a year before.

Yes, that’s right, I’m not making any of this up.

Anyway, the sexually frustrated cop had kidnapped her and driven to some nearby spooky woods in an attempt to make her remove the hex – except he ended up beating her to death in a fit of rage instead, before hiding the body high up in a tree.

Then, in the final scene, Hattie’s moody goth twin underwent an impromptu blonde dye-job and pedalled past her sister’s killer as he picnicked in a field with his family, causing him to assume his victim had come back from the dead and to practically choke on a mouthful of Victoria sponge.

Me? I almost spat hot cocoa down my PJs at the sheer audacity of it all.